by Skyler Grant
The hangar occupied the lowest level, adjacent to levels devoted to supply and equipment storage. The top deck held the four residential suites with the lounge a central torus with sweeping views of the outside.
Everyone had taken a spot in one of the quarters, all of which had already been sealed. All except for Banok who was in the central residential hub with the interface Nyx had made. Banok didn’t have a clue how it worked, and just fed magical energy into a tangled bundle of wires.
The station began to shake—the engine must have engaged. This was a big jump, and aborting it in the middle of nowhere would leave them in a station falling apart and still possibly far from help.
Banok kept feeding power while the station trembled. Sparks began to fly as systems fried. Banok held on until he again began to hear metal shred and tear, and then he dove through the open doorway, a metal shutter slamming shut behind him.
15
It took hours for them to finally be rescued from the sealed rooms of the station. The mercenaries in orbit weren’t really equipped to mount rescue operations, still, Nyx had set the short range transmitter to identify them and the mercenaries were interested in seeing their employer live.
It didn’t take long for them to be transported back down to the planet’s surface. Vanwyn accompanied them, and they still hadn’t heard from Cleo or Delilah about how their half of the mission had gone. Banok was already worried. More than worried, the sense of unease was palpable.
Banok caught up on the problems the Grove had experienced while he’d been away. There was nothing too bad. Mainly a power struggle between the trainer of novices he’d appointed and the primary combat instructor over just how hard to push the novices.
Another fifty druids had arrived, with reports of yet still more on the way. The new transceiver was working well and there had been some success in contacting those who had escaped the destruction inflicted on the Order.
As soon as Banok had taken care of necessary business he asked Nyx and the others to meet him at the transmitter. A small tarp was draped over the transmitter itself. There was still no additional construction in the area. It was best not to taunt the Grove any more than necessary.
Nyx tried to hail the Catspaw, but all they got in response was silence.
“I don’t like this,” Banok said, pacing back and forth.
Jia looked at him in concern. “If she wound up somewhere like we did, would she have been able to get away?”
“Cleo is smart, and she wouldn’t be worried about honor. She’d take the deal and shoot them in the face later if she didn’t like how things were working out,” Nyx said.
“She likes shooting faces,” Banok said. “She would have escaped.”
“Something is wrong. I can feel it,” Vanwyn said.
“I’ve been feeling it too. Ever since we got back. I just know she’s in trouble,” Banok said.
“That is it. Since we got back. I’ve been in a lot of wars, Banok, enough to know that something bad is coming for us and coming fast,” Vanwyn said.
She was right. Banok knew it as soon as Vanwyn spoke up. He was worried about Cleo because he was worried about Cleo, but that sense of unease? It was something else.
Banok reached out through the Grove, using it to extend his senses. No unusual lifesigns, but there was metal close to the Grove, in the air. There was a lot of metal in the sky.
“Hail the fleet in orbit. We’ve got incoming on the surface,” Banok said.
Nyx hurriedly spun one of the dials, putting her whole body into the effort.
“How close?” Vanwyn asked, turning her attention to the sky.
“Too close,” Banok said. Too close to get back to the camp and make any difference there. Banok sent his will out into the Grove and asked—no, demanded—that it do its best to protect the druids.
Magical energy poured into the floor of the clearing and he tore the earth apart, a pit opening in an instant.
“Inside,” Banok growled. “You too, Nyx. You’ve done what you can.”
Vanwyn was in the pit almost instantly, those reflexes born of a lifetime of wars was coming in handy. Jia was the slowest and Banok had to tug her along. He tucked her beneath him as he erected a magical barrier over the top of the pit.
It was just in time. The Grove began to scream within his mind. Somewhere, something was hurting it, killing it, and he felt that an instant before he heard the distant booms.
The earth shook around them, violently trembling with the force of the blasts nearby. The shield formed of Banok’s magic was particularly good at resisting fire, and it was a good thing. The Grove was resistant to flames as well—and yet the Grove burned all the same.
Jia was sobbing, wrenching and agonized sounds. Every druid had a connection with the Grove. For all that her flesh might be unmarked, a part of her was burning alive.
It went on for minutes. Minutes of shaking, minutes of heat. Their air quickly grew stale and Banok used a thread of air magic to refresh it. It was easier than lifeforce at the moment. The Grove was desperately trying to preserve any that remained.
When the blasts finally faded, Banok released his shield and rose from the pit. It wasn’t a surprise that the Grove was devastated, it was a surprise that anything remained of it at all. The trees were scorched and blackened, twisted in the strangest of ways and with embers glowing brightly throughout the trunks.
It was almost total destruction. Almost but not complete, there were still lifesigns. Banok was still alive and while he lived, the Grove lived. While the Grove lived, he lived. There were druids too out there still, he could feel them. Yet the feeling of dread wasn’t gone, it was stronger. This wasn’t over.
16
What was Banok missing? With the Grove in this state his senses were far weaker than they had been even moments before. Still, he could feel enough to know that the aircraft that had done this bombing were pulling back with their payloads delivered.
“Orbital bombardment,” Vanwyn said, staring towards the sky.
Banok looked up, sending a flicker of lifeforce to his eyes to amplify and enhance his vision as he conjured a gust of air to part the smoke.
There, three incoming projectiles. Whatever the bombs that had just smashed the Grove, these weren’t the same. These were something worse. The very air around them was lit with magical sigils, intricately layered upon each other. Banok had seen Delilah work often enough to recognize Spellweaver magic, although this a far larger working than any he’d ever seen her perform.
Their descent wasn’t random though, they were all angled exactly towards him. Power, it must be magical power. They were tracking the strongest magical presence in the Grove and that was him.
“Get back to the camp. There are survivors, help them. They’re hunting me,” Banok said.
Banok could run away from the others faster than they could run from him. The muscles of his legs got a flow of lifeforce and a boost, amplifying their strength, and then he was off at a sprint. Away from the camp, away from the others.
If this were an attempt to kill him he didn’t see a way out of it. The Grove wasn’t dead, but it was so close to it that the difference barely mattered. That cut Banok off from a considerable portion of his power. What he had remaining was Astra and the amulet she bore.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any good ideas?” Banok thought as he ran, clouds of ash and embers rising with every step.
“A few years of training and void magic could suck the energy right out of those sigils,” Astra thought back.
The incoming projectiles were now visible even without magical senses. Each was a different color, one red, one blue, and one green. The magic of each felt different, powerful, but complex in altogether different ways.
Weaken the Grove and then destroy its master. Banok hadn’t really felt cocky back on the space station when he’d said no, but there the danger had seemed immediate. This was where he was strongest, where he should have been unstoppable.
Yet, this was where they’d decided to kill him and finish the extermination of the druids.
It was far enough. Banok was at the very limits of the Grove, close to the wall protecting the city-dwellers. Any further and he’d have to fight his way through those defenses, and it wouldn’t gain him much more distance.
Instead he paused amongst the ruins of the Grove and lifted his gaze to the sky, spreading his arms wide.
“You want me, come and get me,” Banok said, drawing in whatever power he had left.
The streaking balls of color advancing grew larger, the runework in the air surrounding them now visible with the naked eye.
A glimpse of silver flickered at the edge of his vision, and Banok heard the sound of wings—then his sight of the missiles was obscured.
A dragon. Banok knew this one, they’d met, once, when he was creating the Grove for this world.
Astraxia, she’d been kept prisoner beneath a bank for generations. The energy siphoned from the bonds which had held her was part of what had fueled the Grove.
“Astraxia, what are you doing?” Banok called.
The dragon gave no sign of hearing him, instead rearing her head back to breath fire. The flames seemed to fragment as soon as they left her mouth, forming a complex interlocking set of runes. Banok had never seen the like, although they looked similar to Dwarvish magic.
Had Astraxia learned a bit of their art from once being their prisoner? Or did the Dwarves originally learn of their magic from the dragons, just as the druids had learned theirs from the Elves?
Whatever the dragon was doing she didn’t have long to do it, given how quick those projectiles were closing. Banok reached out with his magic, sharing the power of Astra and the amulet.
It was an almost palpable tug on his essence as the dragon seized hold of that power and spun it into the runes she was creating.
The projectiles hit and the world seemed to dissolve into a single white glare. Even through the shields the force drove Banok to his knees, and the ground shook as a silver form crashed down nearby, the dragon rolling back to her feet in an instant, wings spread wide.
The rumbles of the blast faded. Banok was alive, improbably. He would have laughed if his throat wasn’t so raw and aching from all the ash and embers he’d breathed in.
“My debt is repaid, Druid. I claim the southern isles as my lair. Your people venture in at their peril.”
The psionic blast nearly tore Banok’s skull apart, the dragon flapping her wings before taking off and flying off without a backward glance.
Right, it was good to have friends. This one might be a problem another day, but at least there would be another day.
17
Banok sprinted once more through the ruins of the Grove, this time back in the direction from which he’d come. Towards the druid encampment.
His magical senses were still barely functioning. Even apart from the damage to the Grove the recent magical blast had almost blinded that part of him. Being that close to such a large display of magical energy had been crippling, although he didn’t think it would be permanent.
As he drew closer to the camp there was a new reason to be concerned. The sound of gunfire.
When he reached the edge of the encampment, there was nothing to signify it had even been an encampment. All the tents were gone, nothing remained of them and their contents. Well, except for the people. There were survivors, and they were in trouble.
There were over one hundred men in body armor walking among the fallen. They had diverse weapons, although all packed more of a punch than the ones Banok had seen the last time he encountered soldiers in the Grove. They’d learned from their mistakes, and he’d wished they hadn’t.
They were both attackers and under siege. Thornhounds only half-formed, blackened and smoldering like everything else, sprang at them. Vanwyn was behind the husk of a tree. She used a stolen rifle to take the occasional perfectly placed shot before a barrage of fire sent her back diving for cover.
Jia was on the ground, her robes dark with blood. Shots had torn through her abdomen, and it was a miracle that she was still alive. No, not a miracle, a root had plunged itself into one of the wounds. The Grove, busy dying, doing the best it could to keep her breathing. Sharing what little lifeforce remained.
This proved it. The city-dwellers weren’t just bystanders to whatever had happened here, they were complicit. Their aircraft had delivered the bombs, their soldiers had come to make sure the job was finished. Whatever those three blasts were that had tried to kill Banok, that wasn’t them, but everything else they had a role in.
Enough. It was enough.
Banok reached his magic towards the nearest soldiers and wrenched. It wasn’t his first time doing this, stealing lifeforce.
It had originally gotten him kicked out of the Druid Order. The taint of that deed was part of the reason his Grove was so twisted. But, Jia was dying, his people were dying. These soldiers had come here to kill them and they had the lifeforce he needed.
The first few soldiers collapsed lifelessly to the ground, puppets with their strings cut.
Banok reached out for the lifesigns of the druids. Of Jia, of the others. Feeding them, fueling them.
It looked as if the dead were rising. The robes had burned off the druids. They were naked, soot-stained and seared. Their flesh stained gray by the devastation around them.
“Druids. The Grove needs their lifeforce. Take it,” Banok shouted.
There just wasn’t enough strength in him to do all that was required, not after what had happened. If the Druid Order was going to survive, it was going to have to earn that survival.
Even in the state they were in most of the experienced druids hesitated. The prohibition had been driven into them over and over again, a lifetime of teaching them that vampirism like this was the highest crime.
The head of the novices stumbled towards the soldiers. Bullets tore at her flesh, but for each that hit a soldier died, her wounds healing themselves as the lifeforce she stole knitted flesh back together.
The soldiers opened fire en masse.
Druids fell. The fight couldn’t really be called that, it was over almost as soon as it began. Almost half of the druids that survived the bombing were torn apart by bullets, and without drawing in further lifeforce stayed down. The other half survived. It was mostly the initiates, those far enough along in their training to be able to draw power in that way, yet didn’t consider the forbidden rule as immutable.
The soldiers were down completely. None of them would be getting back up.
The Grove had gotten much of that power. Not nearly what it would need to restore itself properly. Still, enough perhaps for it to get a start.
The three magical-seeking missiles that had almost killed Banok should have damaged enough of an area to take out the wall defenses nearby. Banok used his connection with the Grove to suggest it use that breach to attack.
Banok understood now that the Grove hadn’t pushed outwards further only because of his reluctance to do so. That reluctance was now gone. The city-dwellers had tried to wipe his people out, and while they hadn’t acted alone, they’d have no mercy from him.
The Grove needed lifeforce to restore itself and there was a planet full of it.
The druids were staring at him, stunned, staggering on their feet. They didn’t know where to go from here, neither did Banok.
18
Banok tasked most of the remaining druids to look for further survivors. He thought it unlikely there would be any, but perhaps the Grove had found a way to shelter others somewhere.
Then he called together a meeting. Nyx, Jia, Vanwyn and the instructor of the novices who had been the first to act, Arianna.
Jia was still in her bloodstained robe. They all looked the worse for wear. Arianna was dressed in clothing pulled off a soldier’s corpse, it was all they had.
“Our people don’t have any shelter for tonight. We need to find something for them, the nights
get cold,” Arianna said.
“You do. I need to get off this world. They’re hunting me and it won’t escape their notice I survived. While I’m here they’ll attack again,” Banok said.
“They might attack this place even if you leave,” Vanwyn said.
“Is what remains a threat to them?” Banok asked, rubbing at his eyes. “We were barely that before, and we’re but a fraction of that now.”
“You just asked our people to violate one of our greatest laws. Asked me to. And now you’d leave us? We’re lost,” Arianna said.
“Lost, but alive. The first we can figure out later, it is the second we don’t get a second chance at,” Banok said.
“If we’re going to get off this world, we need a starship. The city would have a lot of them, but I don’t think they like you very much, dummy,” Nyx said, her wings fluttering as she flew over to land on Banok’s shoulder. She seemed subdued, exhausted.
“Which is the solution to our housing problem as well. I’ve ordered the Grove to attack. It will be strong there once it starts feeding, strong enough to protect our people,” Banok said.
Arianna slumped, leaning against the burned out husk of a tree. “That is it, then. Afterwards, we all become monsters, housed in the homes of the people we’ve killed.”
“You didn’t start this war,” Banok said with a shake of his head. “I did, but they had their chance to leave things at peace. They should have taken it.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do, Master?” Jia asked. “However angry you are, however angry you have a right to be, there are a lot of people that had nothing to do with this.”
“We’re not stopping anybody from leaving. In fact, we’ve been telling them for some time that they should. But whoever the innocent people in those cities are, they didn’t stop the others from trying to wipe us out.”
